csummers.org

I hereby declare my household to be the Nation of Conster, presided over by my Royal Self, my Royal Queen, and our two Royal Princesses.

This morning the Nation of Conster was one worthy of its name. The eldest Royal Princess awoke early with a catastrophic failure of her Princess Panties (i.e., pull-ups) and a resulting two-legged, oozing, "we're going to get more messy before we can get clean", Royal Poo. His Royal Highness would have rather worked the stables, where at least He would have the benefit of a pitch fork's distance. I nearly used a whole box of wipes.

Somewhat calmed and looking forward to Royal Cinnamon Rolls, the eldest Royal Princess smote His Highness's jovial mood when deciding to drop and shatter a Royal Bowl. The Royal Broom and Royal Vacuum were called to duty.

By now, the younger Royal Princess had awoken from her beauty sleep, and was requesting her breakfast to be hastily provided. In the midst of cleaning up the shattered Royal Bowl, the Royal King had forgotten to put the Royal Cinnamon Rolls in the Royal Oven. The Royal Queen attempted to assuage the starving Royal Princess with a Royal Banana, but she would not be satisfied.

A day in the life of the Nation of Conster. This is my family, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

For those of you who don't get it, Nation of Conster = Consternation.

Seal made with Official Seal Generator.

It just so happens that my birthday falls on Halloween. We took our girls to our church's Fall Festival, where much fun and candy was had. I told my two year old that it was my birthday party. I'm not sure if she believed me.

Lose 10 pounds in 1 second! You won't believe your eyes!

Some of HP's new digital cameras having a "slimming" feature. Who needs Photoshop these days?

Wild stuff. Of course, you're just subtracting that 10 pounds the camera already adds, right?

More info at HP

My page could use a little eye candy. This post is courtesy of my 2 1/2 year old daughter.

Imagine my surprise today when I opened the first of 10 Play-Doh cans and found several colors had been mixed into one. Oh well, it's just one can, I thought. Then I opened the second, the third, oh no, the fourth, argh!, the fifth, and so on. All ten. Play-Doh tragedy. It won't be long before they all just look like poo. Of course, that will be fun in its own way

If you can't tell yet, I'm not a Play-Doh color mixer. Are you the Play-Doh color mixing type?

My daughter calls these big M&M's.

A beautiful fountain. My daughter likes to use the special swizzors.

I have to admit that these do look kind of pretty now. Maybe it's not so bad.

In the Fall of 1997, I put up my first real webpage on GeoCities (this was before Yahoo bought it in '99). GeoCities was a free webhosting service in which users arranged themselves into Neighborhoods. I was in the Heartland-Ranch neighborhood promoting family values, etc.

My site was called Curtis' Realm:

Pages included Computer Stuff, Guitar, a page about my youth group and worship band, the obligatory Guestbook, and even a blog-like section called "What I Think…".

One of my gems at the time was my GeoGreetings Holiday Card contest entry. Folks submitted holiday images to GeoCities staff, and a select few were chosen that would be used to allow users to send holiday emails to others. The image requirements were stringent: GIF, 240px by 240px, under 8Kb. I submitted the following, and to my surprise, it was chosen! One of my secrets was that I hid my initials (CRS) in the picture. Can you find them?

Looking back, GeoCities was extremely corny and amateurish, but I suppose it played a part in getting me where I am today. To that effect, I sometimes wonder if my abhorrence towards MySpace is excessive. Is MySpace just the new GeoCities? Is it providing that initial, necessary playground for web newbies? My defense of GeoCities in 1997 would have to be that every website (including major companies) looked amateurish. Your thoughts?

Did you have a GeoCities site?

UPDATE 6/14/06:
At the suggestion of others, this post has been rated PG.
Proceed at your own risk.

Working at home has its advantages. The best part is eating lunch with my girls every day.

Unlike my previous workplace, though, we do not have a Wendy's and Taco Bell within walking distance. And, my wife will tell you that, for some reason, I do not enjoy plain ham and cheese sandwiches — frustrating the "what do we have for lunch?" quandary.

I will tolerate grilled cheese sandwiches, though, so we sometimes have grilled cheese with soup or grilled cheese and ham. A while back I discovered a new variation of the grilled cheese sandwich using one of my favorite ingredients: Wolf Brand Chili.

Wolf Brand Chili has no equal. It is the best chili on the planet.

There's no real magic to making a grilled chili cheese sandwich, but here are some tips:

• You'll want to prevent spreading the chili on the opposite side of an already buttered piece of bread in mid-air. I'll leave this exercise to the reader.
• Unless you want to eat your sandwich with a fork, spread the chili thinly.

Bon appetit!

For reference, here's another chili cheese sandwich: The Double Decker–definitely one for the fork!